I haven't seen people giving too much info on what the strategy should be for beating hell. There is the one video of beating hell where the guy seems to have a lot of luck in finding equipment. The main thing in any run for me always seems to be about having a lot of bombs. I've only reached Hell once, and it was because I had two dark levels before the black market, so I had a lot of cash to buy both the ankh and a lot of other equipment.

I guess the main strategy question is if one should try to kill all shopkeepers or stay friendly with them. I haven't had much luck in killing them all. The black market gets tough, and it's always possible that an exit spawns in such a way that it's hard to get past the angry shopkeeper.

Success in this game is pretty dependant on what items you get. I mean, if you don't get a single bomb sack throughout the game, you'll have a very tough time.

That said, I find that the single most important strategy, for me, is to rob the Black Market. If I didn't get the Eye in the mines, I'd always start over. I'd try to always have $20k in case an early shop had a jetpack, so as to not piss them off too soon. The thing with robbing the Market is that after that, the shopkeepers aren't really a problem to deal with and can be seen more as a permanent source of new shotguns.

On Ice Caves, they'll always jump off the side and kill themselves and in Temple, the exit is always on a raised platform that they can have trouble getting back up on once they start spazzing out. Hell can be harder but you should have more than plenty of bombs after robbing the Market and you can just use those to open a wide path for them to run away on while you sneak out the exit.